Densho Digital Archive - Richard Kosaki Interview (denshovh-krichard-01-0028)

<Begin Segment 28>

MM: Okay, so now we're in about 1956 and you're coming, you've finished your PhD, on, excuse me, you've finished your PhD. And you go back to UH. And do you go back as an assistant professor at that time?

RK: Yes, I think I went back with a PhD degree to get at least hired as a assistant professor.

MM: What were those first years like as an assistant professor, tenure track?

RK: Well, they were nice years. We had a rather heavy teaching load, but I enjoyed teaching. As you well know, you work very hard at your first classes. And one of the things I found out is, in some ways I did best with the subjects I knew least about, especially at the undergraduate level because I could simplify enough as not to confuse them. [Laughs] But on subjects that you know too well, you know this, you know that, and before you know it you're in such detail and everything else, you're not getting you're main point across. So early in my career I found that to be true. And of course, as you know, the young professors get the larger classes, introductory courses. And, but I must say I enjoyed introductory courses. And at that time I realized that my job, because introductory course you have mainly students who aren't interested in political science, are taking it to get rid of a core requirement. I found myself more in the order of trying to stimulate the students, you know, into enjoying the subject. And not so much getting into detail, because, of course, the details are in your textbooks and you go to the library, and the details constantly change. So I tried to think about my successful classroom professors of the past and most of them, when I look back, didn't go into details, one, two, three, four. They had major themes that they wanted to expound on that day and did a beautiful job of organizing materials around that. So I tried to do that. I thought more and more, teaching was -- especially undergraduate level -- motivating the students. On the graduate level you take it that the students are motivated so it's a slightly different approach.

MM: In those early years when you were just starting off as an assistant professor, did you have aspirations to sometimes, to sometime in your career be chancellor?

RK: No, I never had that in mind. I thought teaching was it. In many ways to be good teacher is something. And that's all I aspired to be.

MM: I've heard it, heard you described as a good professor who was a reluctant administrator.

RK: [Laughs] Yeah, in a sense. Well, my theory of administration is, even I got into administration, and had to select people to be fellow administrators. I had a silent rule, if someone was very eager to have the job as administrator, I would count that as a negative. I think administration, in many ways, is like a bureaucracy, it's a facilitator. And someone who loves to do that will probably use that position as a power position. I don't think it should be such. So I like reluctant administrators. If you love your job as administrator too much, I think you get to be authoritarian or dictatorial. Anyway, that's my personal view.